


Clairvoyance

by HereComesMe



Series: V.N.B. Universe [1]
Category: Supernatural, Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Also I'll add more tags as the fic goes on, Background Relationships, F/F, Gen, Multi, OC/? - Freeform, References to Supernatural (TV), Reincarnation, Some elements from Spn are copied here for the sake of the OC, Supernatural characters ain't in this
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-29
Updated: 2016-08-29
Packaged: 2018-08-11 17:06:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7900837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HereComesMe/pseuds/HereComesMe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What's dead should stay dead.</p><p>But this old and eternal life never died, so why are they new and living in the body of this child?</p><p>(Rewritten version of FF(.)Net's Stone Hard)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Clairvoyance

_ “A clean body is just as important as a pure soul.” _

 

**_______________________**

  
  


Before you become the tiny component of your carrier that makes up a tiny pink human, you are just a soul amongst many. Your future has yet to be determined by fate as the hands of such a being falter on pages and pages of who you will be- who you have yet to become.

 

You’re an important soul with an important life ahead, for you are a companion amongst the people you are destined to meet, to befriend, to love, to hate, to admire and one day you will pass on, leaving your legacy of awe and history of your path behind. You are who you are and whatever fate decides you to be. Despite your hardships and victories you are amazingly still yourself.

 

You are new and experience a life that unfolds based on your discoveries.

 

You aren’t meant to have already felt hardships nor should you know that the person holding you now shall be called ‘Mother’ and that there is a War.

 

Who are you? Why do you feel this exuberance and relief at fresh air?

 

How do you know so much about the world already when you have yet to gurgle tears or open your eyes?

 

One thing you know is that you can’t hear the calamity of the Garrison or the shouts and fire and decay of your siblings Falling. This isn’t right, you wonder, but you bask in the warmth of the woman who holds you as you’re checked over and your weight is measured. You have yet to hold the power to open your eyes and gaze at the new world that lies open to you much of a book of the olden speak.

 

‘ _ Where am I and how have I come to be here? _ ’ you whine repetitively, ears tuned to the sky, hoping to hear the squabble that took over the span of millennia.

 

___

  
  


Veronica Nancy Bayer forgets a majority of her infant years as there’s nothing much except vague glimpses of looking up at her nursery ceiling, a soft young face that is her mother and a mobile that looks handmade with knitted animals that live across the ocean. There is much to go by from her embarrassing toddler years, she remembers meeting a boy with dark red hair who loved shoving her shoulder and that she’d slap his face in return. Sometime as the two got older they became close friends, as most of the other kids in the neighborhood were too old or they didn’t get along well enough with.

 

His name is Todd Bates and he’s a weird character, but somehow manages to remain loyal through and through. His dad had a leg amputated while overseas during the war, so he’s gotten to know his dad practically since he was born.

 

Veronica’s father’s memory lies on the dog tag her mother received alongside the telegram in the late summer of 1918.

 

With the vague notion of working in some rank of the law, Todd is told to get good grades and ‘be a good kid’ while he grows up steadily, he quickly becomes of average attractiveness.

 

Veronica doesn’t gain much height after her thirteenth birthday, everyone assumes she has a growth disorder; a tiny voice in the back of her head nags that this is the way she should be.

 

Years add up and seasons change rapidly to her, an event in which she experiences semi-regularly becomes another problem. It’ll be one Sunday she wakes up and what will feel like hours later turns into two weeks after said date. She decides to title those ‘time-skips’, apparently she goes on autopilot in the lost time- or at least she’ll realize that after years to come.

 

The winter of 1933 brings Polio when her mother collapses on a trip out of the kitchen.

 

For some reason she finds herself saying goodbye to her mother in 1936 the evening that she leaves her weekly visit at the hospital. Widow Evelyn Bayer passes away at one thirty-three am the following day.

 

Before the grief can set in, Veronica argues with the dog tag on how she knew that her mother was telling her daughter the last goodbye. She stares at the jewelry box that she knows is in her possession now and adds her mother’s wedding and engagement rings to her necklace in lonely silence.

 

Todd and the strangers down the street all offer their condolences the week before her father’s mother moves into the too-big house. The following weeks becomes the month that she gains some inches on her height and longer legs and she knows she feels older now that her barely forty year-old mother has passed.

 

Grandmother Cecilia takes good care of her and takes her to Mass on a consistent schedule while Veronica silently grieves behind closed doors and the tight hugs Todd offers her. Said friend becomes engaged to the former pigtailed girl they both knew back in grade school.

 

It’s at that one point in time for Veronica to recognize that she only ages on her own watch- and that she knows hours before somebody dies. So when she is talking to her Grandmother on the phone in 1938 she begins crying when the purple taste of ominous death fills her lungs, telling Cecilia that she loves her and she’ll be home soon; the front door has been bashed in with the heels of heavy boots and her Grandmother lies in a quiet, peaceful position between the phone and her shattered teacup.

 

In 1943 her body adjusts to a proper young womans’ physique when Todd and his wife have their first child, so she sets out for a new life. She remembers the infant days and leaves in her Grandmothers’ old Chevy Coach.

 

___

  
  


Leaving her home town opens her eyes to the world around her. She loves feeling free and takes the first week away from home partying in clubs of unknown character, fully extending herself to possibilities that lay in rooms full of the character scents of cheap cigarettes and alcohol. She meets a woman who calls herself Gertrude Warren, though she prefers Gertie. The blonde-turning-smokey brunette admits she’s a flapper and offers a much more expensive-looking cigar than the man at the bar had.

 

They quickly become bar-hopping pals, looking for places to dance and sing. The two women differ in age greatly but seem to get along more famously than Todd and Veronica ever had. It surprises Veronica how well the thirty-something year-old woman seems to connect to her. 

 

Occasionally, they stop by Gertie’s apartment to sit on the fire escape and talk about their childhood. Gertie’s uncle had been in the war and though he never married or had any children he had left a generous amount of money towards her of all his nieces and nephews. She had originally meant to go to college with the money left behind but then her father fell into debt and they needed the money. In the end she wound up leaving after her younger brother was mugged and shot on his way home from school. She tells Veronica this with a straight face and only offers another cig, she whispers that her brothers’ name was Michael.

 

They swap post-war tragedies from when they were kids and move onto lighter subjects when they get into too-grisly documents. While they prep for a sleepover at Veronica’s apartment one night she mentions offhandedly that she used to be into astronomy in High School; Gertie drives the two of them two hours out of the city and into the countryside to stargaze.

 

One night, when Gertie over drinks a bit too much alcohol to remember much the next morning, Veronica tells her about her Death Senses. The look the older woman gives is only sympathetic and dismal in the light of the full moon. The gray toned brunette lacks the bashfulness from former one-armed hugs and curls around Veronica in a full-on embrace. She attempts a verse from the bible but fails when the two of them start sobbing with the heat of alcohol in their stomachs; it turns out the two of them are emotional drunks.

 

Veronica, however, eventually has to move on when eight years pass. Gertie is aging and she can’t. Somebody will notice.

 

She leaves her mother’s engagement ring to Gertrude alongside a pinched wad of cash the night of Halloween and never looks back.

 

___

  
  


The problem with never aging and keeping to yourself for a result is that time moves a lot faster when you’re doing nothing but living in an empty space of the world. Life is supposed to be an adventure of emotions and companionship. Living it merely as an observer isn’t all what it’s cut out to be when it only tells you how old you should be in comparison to the woman with graying hair, of which is probably younger than you.

 

Vernice Bayer, as she calls herself now to authorities after paying unsavory parties to forge new documents for herself, thinks of such subjects when she arrives to her father’s war memorial in Washington, D.C. looking upon the cold stone two years after its erection. She can look into the sculpted eyes of General Pershing in broad daylight and moonlight alike and still- somehow- she is intimidated by the amazing honor it must be to sacrifice a life for the many lives of others.

 

It takes her only seconds to find her fathers’ name alongside his allies.

 

___

  
  


Somehow, she must have done something right or said the correct thing, as she apparently is talking to a wealthy woman who introduces herself as Celia who is hosting a private gathering with her close friend named Martha. Vernice and Celia may not get well in spirit, but they hold a polite conversation of a certain sort? Celia, however, feels indebted and asks Vernice to be her plus one when she’s trying to avoid her ex-boyfriend named Denny.

 

Vernice gets to meet Martha the night of the party, borrowing a comfortable dress of expensive navy blue fabric from Celia’s wardrobe and wearing her mother’s remaining ring on the index finger of her right hand. Martha is just as beautiful as her friend, is what Vernice concludes.

 

“Oh, hello! You must be Vernice, it’s a pleasure to meet you,” the dark-haired woman greets, shooing off her butler who stands nearby in a state of neutrality. “You really helped her out, didn’t you? Or at least I’m assuming it was well-thought out?” She laughs a clear, bell-like laugh that Vernice almost flusters under the pressure of laughing along with.

 

“It was no big deal, really,” she responds modestly and turns pink at the put-upon stare Martha Wayne gives her. “I mean,” Vernice continues with a cheeky-yet-shy smile after Celia pointedly leaves to the buffet table. She fails to notice the stares Martha’s interaction with her brings their way and somehow manages to continue on in her state of obliviousness, “I suppose it was  _ that _ big of a deal?” She finishes their spoken conversation rather lamely because Martha Wayne is  _ stunning _ and Gertie never had that intense of a stare when speaking to Veronica.

 

The two women giggle like children and Vernice only blushes harder.

 

And then a small voice calls out for Martha in the voice of a child.

 

“Mom!”

 

Martha is brought out of their giggling by a boy who  _ must _ be her son and Vernice kicks herself inwardly because how could she forget that Martha is married and has a  _ son _ ? Idiot, she scolds herself.

 

“Bruce!” Martha “Mom” Wayne laughs while she hugs her (probably?) five year old son who looks at Vernice curiously. “Bruce, this is Vernice,” the lovely brunette tells her son. “She has the same terrible humor as your father,” she stage-whispers, not knowing how that makes Vernice fluster even more under their scrutiny. Oh boy, Vernice thinks as the two giggle at their inside joke.

 

“Vernice, this is my son, Bruce,” and the two greet each other politely with formal handshakes, one with a coy smile and the other with a shark smile that only adorable children can pull off.

 

“How old are you?” Bruce asks rather bluntly but the image of perfect innocence that Vernice even knows is real. Martha rolls her eyes and smiles fondly, “He’s trying to win the bet against Alfred on what the age demographics are at our parties.”

 

Vernice slows down time to a crawl, a hard technique she taught herself five or so years before after an exposure that happened in a grocery store; the glass jars above the child who was playing on the shelf were about to fall and she had pushed the child some feet to their right so they were out of the smashing zone when it finally fell.

 

How old am I? She wonders counting dually how long she had for this ‘Time-crawl’ and guesstimating how old she should make herself. She didn’t need long and quickly ended the crawl.

 

“Late twenties,” she admits faux vaguely, subtracting four decades from her actual age and giving him a thumbs up when he flashes a grin. “Great! I’m winning so far, I’m gonna go ask the other deceptively young-looking people,” Martha gasps dramatically at that, “Bruce!” He doesn’t apologize and giggles while avoiding his mothers’ wrath and squirms around a man who seems to be approaching Martha.

 

“Should I be worried?” He asks the lovely lady in sleek black before he pecks her cheek. “I would hope you would,” Martha says seriously while kissing him back. Vernice takes this as her opportunity to escape before she takes on the man she was ‘similar in humor with’.

 

She finds a man passing out flutes of wine and takes one for herself for the night ahead, decidedly taking the night off of her usual ‘I-will-observe-the-real-aging-humans’ and decides to socialize with the elite no matter how uncomfortable she is when they ask if she is the head or heir of big companies. She elusively leaves the room after that and somehow finds herself outside with Martha. Alone.

 

She kicks herself inwardly once again when she stares too long at the  _ married mother _ thus Martha catches her gaze and invites her over before Vernice can escape.

 

The two gaze out at the dark emerald night and somehow Vernice tells Martha what she told an old friend something from ages past.

 

“I used to want to take astronomy in High School,” the hazel-eyed girl in a borrowed navy satin dress tells the married mother.

 

“Oh, really? What made you decide not to?” The  _ really _ pretty mother inquires, sipping at the glass of champagne she holds in her left hand.

 

“I wanted to be fluent in French so I took the classes again,” Vernice grumbles, downing the last of her drink. Martha laughs and Vernice’s frown turns into a pleased smile.

 

“C'était le destin!” Martha giggles breathlessly, Vernice flusters and laughs. An acceptable response, she tells herself.

 

“Je ne peux pas le croire!” Vernice exclaims while they both titter quietly at her terrible fake accent and Martha’s better imitation. That context summarizes the rest of the evening until Bruce joins them, and eventually Thomas Wayne, all of them sitting in peaceful silence.

 

The Waynes are different than she expected. She didn’t necessarily stereotype a person by their wealth or lack of, but past experiences back in 1925 gave her the foreknowledge that some wealthier families tended to spoil and fatten their children unnecessarily which eventually made the children whine when they didn’t get what they wanted or hurt others when they didn’t treat them the way they wanted. But Bruce was polite and cheeky and even asked about the significance of her singular ring that ‘wasn’t even on the ring finger so you’re not married why do you wear it?’ She surmises Bruce will be a great detective one day.

 

She admits it was her mothers’ Wedding ring, and since Polio had since then found a treatment years after her mothers’ death she told them that mother passed away some years before. Bruce politely apologized and Martha and Thomas quietly added their condolences. Veronica had since moved on from her mothers’ death that had happened many decades before, but Vernice could not have, so she nodded in an expression undetermined of quiet grief or distress.

 

The four of them listen to the people inside up until they leave and Alfred offers to drive Vernice home because it seems Celia forgot about her. Bruce and Martha optionally offer for her to stay the night because ‘it’s really late and we enjoy your company’.

 

Vernice politely declines mostly out of the foreboding purple taste that’s spread from her lungs to her heart and everywhere else. She doesn’t know who it will be and she doesn’t want to linger too long in Gotham anyways.

 

___

  
  


She still finds herself checking the Gotham Gazette semi-weekly for the deaths of one of the Waynes or all of them. She stayed too long, she cared too much, Vernice tells herself repetitively. Living so long and making a real connection after so long makes her sensitive to emotions and she worries that she may age uncontrollably.

 

Though eventually Vernice thinks maybe it had been the champagne, maybe her Death Sense was false? Could powers like that make mistakes?

 

No, she finds out months later, it just means the last interaction with them is completely the last one you have.

 

Bruce Wayne becomes an orphan and he watches his parents die in an alley by a common thief.

 

Vernice barely resists the urge to go back to Gotham and instead sends her mothers’ wedding ring through the mail and to the manor with a short and vague message expressing her condolences. She doesn’t leave a return address because she’s moving west to keep up her anonymity.

 

It’s January 21st, 2000 when she finds a wax-sealed envelope with a short nondescript message only containing two phrases:

 

_ Happy eighty-secondth. _

 

_ I know. _

  
A smaller package holds a ring that Nancy Bayer quickly returns to its rightful place beside the polished dog tag.

**Author's Note:**

> Wowie, so it's been a while! I'll admit that the actual brainstorming for this new fic started the summer after I left the original and I even derailed from that idea! It's ok if you haven't watched Spn, I'll be refraining from referencing it too much, it's more biblical references than anything. Let me know how you liked the introductory chapter to the new Veronica in the comments below! Constructive Criticism is welcomed! I'm always open to new and helpful ideas! Let me know if you caught the easter egg I inserted in this chapter and you will get a character cameo in the next chapter!
> 
> \- HereComesMe
> 
> (me @ myself: I can't believe you made V have a crush on Martha Wayne you're so gaaaay)


End file.
